ZTE

How To Unlock An Orange Monte Carlo (ZTE Skate) [Tutorial]

In this tutorial I hope to guide you through network unlocking an Orange Monte Carlo (ZTE Skate). This tutorial is based on the one by tilal6991 and many others from the MoDaCo forums and they deserve all the credit for the achievement. Credit for the unlock process itself goes to All I am doing here is trying to give you a beginner (Noob) friendly tutorial on how to xiaoxyaoswim network unlock your device. I will try and keep the tutorial as simple as possible and include as many images as possible.
Lets make this a little less Orange...


Network unlocking your device may (probably does) void the guarantee on it in many different ways. There is a risk of total and utter failure of the procedures in this tutorial. I am not responsible for:
  • your phone ending up being unusable and unrepairable
  • the retailer you purchased the device from refusing to take it back as a return, no matter how much you argue with the staff...
  • any tears or tantrums because of your bricked device
  • your ban from aforementioned retailer because of the tears and tantrums
  • you punching kittens in a tantrum
  • the RSPCA prosecuting you because you punched kittens
  • any other of your actions
  • global warming
  • the banking crisis
  • the low number of Jennifer Paige hits in the history of music charts
I am writing this tutorial with the masses in mind. I'll run the tutorial so it can be done on Windows. If there is sufficient demand I may also write a tutorial for Linux users too. (Leave a comment at the end of the post if you would like a Linux tutorial). Ready? Here we go!


To unlock an Orange Monte Carlo you will need a computer running Windows (preferrably Windows 7, but Vista or XP might do) with a spare primary USB port, and an Orange Monte Carlo with its USB cable.


Step 1
Create a new folder on your desktop. You can call it as you wish.
We're going back to IT Skills 101...
Step 2
Download "QPST 2.7 build 366" and install it. You may need an unzip package to do that. Once you have installed QPST, you should be ready for step 3.


Step 3
Download the file from here by clicking on the big green Zip link. The download may take a while because it is approximately 150MB in size.


Once you have downloaded the file, unzip it within the folder we created in step 1 on your desktop.


Step 4
Set your phone up for USB debugging. [Menu=> Settings => Applications => Development] and make sure the USB debugging option is ticked.
Make sure "USB debugging" is ticked
Step 5
Connect you phone (switched on) to your computer through a primary USB port. In Windows, you should have the drivers installed automatically by Windows Update. You may have a problem getting this step completed if your firewall is blocking software from accessing your phone. Try looking through this  MoDaCo Forum thread if you have problems with drivers (hopefully you don't...)


Step 6
Run (double click) “install-recovery-windows.bat” from the preparation folder in the folder from step 1 on your desktop.
“install-recovery-windows.bat” running. No need to try and catch it...
You should get an old style black window that looks like this with text popping up. When the program finishes running, the window will automatically close and your phone will reboot. Don't be alarmed, it may also vibrate.


Step 7
Disconnect the Orange Monte Carlo from your computer, and then remove the back cover and the battery.


Step 8
Wait a few seconds and then reinsert the battery and put the back cover on. Hold the phone and make sure you are pressing the volume down button on the volume rocker on the side when you reinsert the USB cable. Your phone will turn on. Keep holding the volume down button as the green android appears and keep it pressed until a white square with FTM appears onscreen (as in the image).


Step 9
In step 2 you we installed QPST on your computer. Go to your Windows Start button, click it, go to All Programs and there you should have a folder called QPST (you might have to scroll down a bit to find it). In the QPST folder open Software Download.


Step 10
In the Software Download window, select the Backup tab near the top (third tab from the left). In the Port section, select your phone (which should appear if it is in debugging mode and connected to a primary USB port). In the QCN File option, select where to save the .qcn file you are going to generate (I recommend the folder we created on the desktop in step). Once that is done press the Start button just below. The process will take a few seconds and then you will have created a .qcn backup file of your device in the folder you chose.


Close QPST Software Download, but don't forget about it copmpletely, we'll need it again later on... (Thanks to dibbles from the MoDaCo Forums for the feedback on this and many other points of the tutorial!)


Step 11
Double check that the .qcn file has a size larger than zero. This is important, so just go to the folder where you saved the .qcn file, right click on it, go to properties and check the size there. It should be approximately  150Kb in size.


Step12
Now go to the Unlock folder on your desktop and run Download.exe. A new window will open which should look like this:


Step 13
When you are ready, click the START button and the program will run. This may take a while, and your phone will reboot a few times in during the process. 


Once it is done (Ratio 100/100), you will get a popup window saying that the download was successful. You can close that program and go back to the QPST Software Download program.


Step 14
Open QPST Software Download, as we did in Step 9. Select the Restore tab near the top (second from left).


Step 15
In the QCN File section choose your .qcn file from your folder on the desktop and then click the Start button just below and wait for the process to run.


Step 16
Once that is done, close the QPST Software Download window and disconnect your phone from your computer. Your Orange Monte Carlo should now be network unlocked and able to use any SIM card.


This tutorial is mainly based on tilal6991's tutorial on MoDaCo forums. I've tried to make it fuller and more newbie friendly by adding pictures and filling it out. Please leave feedback and let me know what goes well and/or doesn't with the tutorial. Thanks to tilal6991 and all involved in the effort at the MoDaCo forums.


As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions either here or on the relevant post in the MoDaCo forums. Please bear in mind the disclaimer at the beginning of the post.

T-Mobile Vivacity AKA ZTE Blade 2 [Preview]

Today I picked up a T-Mobile Vivacity. Uncertain what type of Gingerbready goodness I was going to find in the magenta box, I was pleasantly surprised to find out it was a ZTE Blade 2 in T-Mobile dress.

The T-Mobile Vivacity is an inexpensive Android smartphone, currently priced at £99 in the UK from T-Mobile. It features a 5MP camera with LED flash at the back, a 3.5" capacitive multitouch display at the front with four capacitive buttons (Menu, Home, Back, Search) beneath and a front facing camera above.
Right side with volume rocker.

Left side with Micro-USB connector.

3.5mm audio jack and on/off button on the top side.

There is a volume rocker on the right hand side of the device, an on/off button on the top next to a 3.5mm audio jack and a micro-USB data/power socket on the left side. The casing of the device is quite plasticky, much the same as the one found on the Orange Monte Carlo / ZTE Skate. Just like the OMC/Skate it is a fingerprint magnet.

The Android version on the T-Mobile Vivacity is a pretty much stock version of Gingerbread (2.3) with a few extra T-Mo apps and wallpapers but nothing too intrusive (unlike the Orange bloatware on the OSF/OMC/OSF II).

Here are some comparison photos with other devices I had lying around on my desk:
T-Mobile Vivacity with HTC Wildfire
T-Mobile Vivacity with ZTE Skate [BAP]
T-Mobile Vivacity with Samsung E1080i 
T-Mobile Vivacity with Orange Mont Carlo (with case) [BAP]
T-Mobile Vivacity with Nokia 1100
T-Mobile Vivacity with Samsung Galaxy Pro
T-Mobile Vivacity with HP Palm Pre 2
I hope these pictures give you an idea of the size of the T-Mobile Vivacity.

The device has been pleasant to use so far. After logging in at the first start up the device took all my usual settings (including homescreen background) and ported them onto the Vivacity. Great stuff!

I ran quadrant and got the results I posted here. Essentially the T-Mobile Vivacity is a T-mobile Version of the ZTE Crescent aka Blade 2. That makes it the magenta sibling of the Orange San Francisco II, which is trickling out in stores at the moment.

I'll eventually get round to a full review of the device, only once I get the tricky Orange Monte Carlo/ZTE Skate one out though. As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below or at the ZTE Crescent forum Crescent.MoDaCo.com .

Orange Monte Carlo Unlock Achieved! [MoDaCo]

The Orange Monte Carlo Android smartphone, Orange's rebranded version of the ZTE Skate is now sim unlockable. This means the phone can be used with any network's sim card after the procedure explained in xiaoyaoswim's post on the android.modaco.com forums.
SIM Unlock Achieved!
The Orange Monte Carlo is currently being sold in Orange stores for £119, and now that there is a free procedure to unlock the device it looks like an even better buy!

Credit to xiaoyaoswim and the rest of the MoDaCo Android community for delivering a very useful service. Thanks to everyone who made this possible!

Links:
As usual, feel free to leave comments and/or questions below.

Daily Record Gadget Filler Fail!

I had to laugh out loud last Friday! In the canteen at work I flicked through a copy of the Daily Record and got to the Gadget and Tech section. My eye was caught by the familiar image of a white Orange San Francisco, a phone I know well. Reading the article "Smartphone's a California Dream" just made me laugh.
Something is horribly wrong with this article...
The article is quite simply a quick review of the Orange Monte Carlo and starts off mentioning the Orange San Francisco. As the article goes on to review and  comment on the Monte Carlo, there is no naming of the successor to the Orange San Francisco. The author of the review is speaking of the Monte Carlo, but obviously the editor/impaginator has picked the name and put in a picture of the Orange San Francisco. (update: since the review was in the paper it has been rectified in the Daily Record blog here)
The image that should have been used (and was  used on the DR blog)
Brace yourselves, my own review of the Orange Monte Carlo, Orange's own branded version of the ZTE Skate, will be here on this website in the coming weeks.

As usual feel free to leave comments and/or questions below and share the link.

Three MiFi - Freedom Is Easy

Last week I travelled from Edinburgh to Prestwick Airport by means of public transport. Along the way I took my trusty Asus EEE PC 900A netbook a Three UK MiFi as well as the rest of the luggage I was taking to Italy for my spring holiday.
On a train, using my netbbok and MiFi
My netbook is currently running a beta release of Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. This version of Ubuntu has drivers built in to use all the most popular mobile broadband dongles and usually there is no need to load additional software to use them. I have tested my netbook with my Three UK mobile broadband dongle and with my T-Mobile one (both are made by ZTE but run on different chipsets).

For this trip, I was not going to be taking any dongles to connect to mobile broadband though. Recently I won a competition organised by Three UK and was sent a Three MiFi device. The MiFi is a portable WiFi hotspot, that lets up to five WiFi devices connect to mobile broadband through it.

The MiFi is great if you are travelling and using a netbook on the go. Rather than have a dongle sticking out of the side of your netbook, you can have the MiFi in a pocket and use WiFi to connect to the internet through it. I can think of three main advantages of this:

  • Not having a dongle sticking out of the side of your netbook reduces the risk of accidentally damaging both your netbook and/or dongle. Think about it - if your netbook were to slip/fall or lean on the dongle, leverage could damage both the dongle and the netbook's usb port. (I have had this happen to me once... RIP Acer Aspire One ZG5)
  • Using a MiFi your netbook's bettery life should be better. This is because your netbook is not powering the USB device that is connecting to the mobile broadband, you are just using WiFi. The MiFi is powered by its own internal battery, and recharges using a standard Micro-USB connector. This is useful to me because both my mobile phones use the same charger format, so when away (as I am now) I only need to take one charger with me for three devices.
  • You can connect up to five devices to the MiFi at once. I did connect more than one device while sitting in the Costa coffee bar in Glasgow Central Station. Both my netbook and my HTC Desire were using the MiFi while I was using Gwibber and downloading a podcast to listen to on my flight. I didn't really perceive any slower network connection while doing so.
Having a hot chocolate, using the MiFi and netbook as well as my HTC Desire.
When I got my first broadband dongle and was using it on Linux (at the time Ubuntu 9.04 and Mint) I had to add drivers and go through a long set up process to make it work properly. This was usually quite a hassle, but was made  relatively easy for me thanks to posts by Liam Green-Hughes on his blog. Those days seem to be gone with Ubuntu 11.04 as dongle support is much better. To tell the truth I wish that back in the day I had had a MiFi. Messing around in terminal windows and adding repositories was fun, but a MiFi would have made life so much easier.
MiFi
I used the MiFi for most of the trip while I was in the UK (on buses, trains, in stations and airports) and had no problems with reception along the way.  I was happily able to use my netbook and still had enough battery life to watch a couple of episodes of Mostly Photo on the flight.


I'm currently in Italy enjoying the spring weather and time with my family.

Just a quick disclosure at the end of the post: I did not pay for my Three UK MiFi device or the mobile broadband sim card with 12 Gb of data on it. This was my competition prize and I was not remunerated by Three UK or any other entity for writing this post. Hopefully this disclaimer avoids any Mike Arrington incidents...

Please feel free to leave questions/comments. Any feedback is appreciated!

Orange San Francisco/ZTE Blade - Budget Android Rocks!

I recently purchased an Orange San Francisco (ZTE Blade) to prepare for someone who wanted to have a simple Android smartphone set up and ready to use.


The Orange San Francisco is a UK network branded version of the Chinese manufacturer ZTE's Blade Android smartphone. (As is the Dell XCD35 in other parts of the world)

The best source of information for rooting/unlocking and installing custom versions of Android on the Orange San Francisco is the MoDaCo Forum related specifically to the device: Blade.MoDaCo.com
A screenshot of the MoDaCo Forums
Another simpler and more "I'm afraid of computers" resource for customising the device is orangesanfrancisco.co.uk
A screenshot of orangesanfrancisco.co.uk
Using the resource on the MoDaCo Forums as soon as I had unboxed the device, I network unlocked it, rooted it and installed ROM Manager. It was then time to say goodbye to Orange's horrible Android 2.1 ROM and apps and hello to a  newer version of Android by Fibblesan called FLB (Faster Lighter Better). I've been a fan of Fibblesan's since he was putting together FLB Mods for the T-Mobile Pulse and would recommend his Android Mods to whoever would like the most stock version of Android possible on a non Google Experience device.

After the FLB Mod was up and running, I installed a few of my favourite apps to make the user experience a little more pleasant. First off it was the Zeam Launcher which is my favourite because of its dock and lightness on system requirements. Then I installed the MIUI Digital Weather Clock. After that was done I installed a theme from the Unified Theme Thread on the MoDaCo forums.

Currently FLB Mod is based on Android 2.2 FroYo, which means it is faster, more responsive and you have the facility to use the WiFi hotspot feature.

For a sub £100 device this is excellent value for money. If you would like a powerful smartphone but don't want to dish out too much cash, I would definitely recommend it. It is easy (and free...) to network unclock and use with any sim card, it has a decent camera and is easily upgradeable and customisable. 

I would like to thank Fibblesan, Frankish and everyone else involved with MoDaCo forums as well as the author of orangesanfrancisco.co.uk for making the personalisation of this device so relatively easy.

Feel free to post comments/questions. I'll reply asap.